More Like this

1. Building Research Skills through Being a Peer Reviewer

   Benson, L. ; Bates, R. ; Jensen, K. ; Lichtenstein, G. ; Watts, K. ; Ko, M ; Albayati, B. ( July 2021 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper describes a peer reviewer mentoring program called the Engineering Education Research Peer Review Training (EER PERT) project and serves as a pilot study on longitudinal effects on researchers’ productivity and the impact of their work, differences in these factors for those who review journal manuscripts and those who review grant proposals, and what aspects of peer review training (knowledge, resources, collaborations, etc.) participants actually carry forward in their own research. Overall, the project seeks to investigate how engineering education research (EER) scholars develop skills and schema for reviewing scholarship, particularly in terms of developing constructive reviews that build expertise and advance knowledge. The Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program constitutes the first phase of the EER PERT project. In this paper, we report on goals, structure and activities for the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program, pilot data from participants’ applications and exit surveys that will inform the EER PERT project in terms of participants’ developing skills and schema for reviewing and conducting EER, and provide initial suggestions from the training program that may benefit scholars new to EER.
2. Building Research Skills through Being a Peer Reviewer

   Benson, Lisa ; Bates, Rebecca A. ; Jensen, Karin ; Lichtenstein, Gary ; Watts, Kelsey ; Ko, Mia ; Albayati, Balsam ( January 2021 , American Society for Engineering Education)

   This paper describes a peer reviewer mentoring program called the Engineering Education Research Peer Review Training (EER PERT) project and serves as a pilot study on longitudinal effects on researchers’ productivity and the impact of their work, differences in these factors for those who review journal manuscripts and those who review grant proposals, and what aspects of peer review training (knowledge, resources, collaborations, etc.) participants actually carry forward in their own research. Overall, the project seeks to investigate how engineering education research (EER) scholars develop skills and schema for reviewing scholarship, particularly in terms of developing constructive reviews that build expertise and advance knowledge. The Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program constitutes the first phase of the EER PERT project. In this paper, we report on goals, structure and activities for the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program, pilot data from participants’ applications and exit surveys that will inform the EER PERT project in terms of participants’ developing skills and schema for reviewing and conducting EER, and provide initial suggestions from the training program that may benefit scholars new to EER.
3. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, K. ; Bates, R. ; Lichtenstein, G. ; Watts, K. ; Ko, E. ; Benson, L. ( June 2022 , 2022 Annual American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference and Exposition)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings.
4. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, Karin ; Ko, Evan ; Lichtenstein, Gary ; Watts, Kelsey ; Bates, Rebecca A ; Benson, Lisa ( August 2022 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings.
5. Peering into the Black Box of Peer Review: From the Perspective of Editors

   Cutler, Stephanie ; Xia, Yu ; Beddoes, Kacey ( December 2021 , Research in Engineering Education Symposium & Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference)

   ABSTRACT CONTEXT The peer review process plays a critical role in ensuring the quality of work published within a field and advancing the knowledge within the research community. However, for many members of the community, the process of peer review largely remains a black box to many scholars, especially those with less experience within the community. Therefore, there is a need to illuminate the peer review process for the research community. PURPOSE OR GOAL To more transparently reveal the contents of the black box around the peer review process, we interviewed editors (associate and deputy editors) for the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) to provide editor perspectives on the overall peer review process. The goal of this paper is to clearly articulate the behind-the-scenes processes of peer review as well as the expectations and perceptions of the editors with respect to publishing within JEE. By bringing these processes to light, we hope that more members of the field will be aware of the overall process and the associated expectations for contributing to the field. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS To meet the goals of this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with six editors of JEE who worked in the field of engineeringmore »education research (EER), as a part of a larger project exploring the boundaries of the field as expressed within the peer reviews process. The interviewer from the research team followed a protocol but also asked additional questions to elicit more details in some cases. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically coded using an open-coding process. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Based on the analysis of the editor interviews, we present three critical aspects of the peer review process: the types of editors, the process that editors typically conduct to identify reviewers, and the types of decisions through the process. Additionally, we highlight considerations and advice from the editors to help members of the EER community develop. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY The current study makes the editors’ perspectives and decision-making processes more explicit to readers. These decision-making processes are full of careful considerations and also challenges. By doing so, we hope to help the members of the EER community gain a better understanding of what is going on backstage of the peer review process.« less